Hasta La Ideas

Dutch Design Week 2013: Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a device for detecting cancer and other serious diseases using trained bees ( + slideshow).

The bees are placed in a glass chamber into which the patient exhales; the bees fly into a smaller secondary chamber if they detect cancer.

“Trained bees only rush into the smaller chamber if they can detect the odour on the patient’s breath that they have been trained to target,” explained Soares, who presented her Bee’s project at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven last month.

Scientists have found that honey bees – Apis mellifera – have an extraordinary sense of smell that is more acute than that of a sniffer dog and can detect airborne molecules in the parts-per-trillion range.

Bees can be trained to detect specific chemical odours, including the biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.

Bees have also been trained to detect explosives and a company called Insectinel is training “sniffer bees” to work in counter-terrorist operations.

“The bees can be trained within 10 minutes,” explains Soares. “Training simply consists of exposing the bees to a specific odour and then feeding them with a solution of water and sugar, therefore they associate that odour with a food reward.”

Once trained, the bees will remember the odour for their entire lives, provided they are always rewarded with sugar. Bees live for six weeks on average.

“There’s plenty of interest in the project especially from charities and further applications as a cost effective early detection of illness, specifically in developing countries,” Soares said.

Here is a project description by Susana Soares:

Bee’s / Project

Bee’s explores how we might co-habit with natural biological systems and use their potential to increase our perceptive abilities.

The objects facilitate bees’ odour detection abilities in human breath. Bees can be trained within 10 minutes using Pavlov’s reflex to target a wide range of natural and man-made chemicals and odours, including the biomarkers associated with certain diseases.

The aim of the project is to develop upon current technological research by using design to translate the outcome into systems and objects that people can understand and use, engendering significant adjustments in their lives and mind set.

How it works

The glass objects have two enclosures: a smaller chamber that serves as the diagnosis space and a bigger chamber where previously trained bees are kept for the short period of time necessary for them to detect general health. People exhale into the smaller chamber and the bees rush into it if they detect on the breath the odour that they where trained to target.

What can bees detect?

Scientific research demonstrated that bees can diagnose accurately at an early stage a vast variety of diseases, such as: tuberculosis, lung and skin cancer, and diabetes.

Precise object

The outer curved tube helps bees avoid from flying accidentally into the interior diagnosis chamber, making for a more precise result. The tubes connected to the small chamber create condensation, so that exhalation is visible.

Detecting chemicals in the axilla

Apocrine glands are known to contain pheromones that retain information about a person’s health that bees antennae can identify.

The bee clinic

These diagnostic tools would be part of system that uses bees as a biosensor.

The systems implies:
– A bee centre: a structure that facilitates the technologic potential of bees. Within the centre is a beefarm, a training centre, a research lab and a healthcae centre.

– Training centre: courses can be taken on beetraining where bees are collected and trained by beetrainers. These are specialists that learn beetraining techniques to be used in a large scope of applications, including diagnosing diseases.

– BEE clinic: bees are used at the clinic for screening tests. These insects are very accurate in early medical diagnosis through detection on a person’s breath. Bees are a sustainable and valuable resource. After performing the diagnose in the clinic they are released, returning to their beehive.

Bee training

Bees can be easily trained using Pavlov’s reflex to target a wide range of natural and man-made chemicals odours including the biomarkers associated with certain diseases. The training consists in baffling the bees with a specific odour and feeding them with a solution of water and sugar, therefore they associate that odour with a food reward.

The post Honey bees can be trained to detect cancer
“in ten minutes” says designer appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch Design Week 2013: Amsterdam designers Studio Drift have created a series of colour-mixing LED lamps with hand-blown glass domes.

The Nola series by Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn of Studio Drift comprises tinted glass bell-jars fitted into circular cork bases, with a ring of LEDs in a contrasting colour under the rim of each glass piece.

The colours mix as the brightly coloured light passes through the pastel glass and further combinations can be created by clustering several pieces together to layer up the different hues.

“Nola started as an experiment, playing with the endless possibilities combining colour and light in a spacial context,” Gordijn told Dezeen. “It became a landscape of light captured in glass bells.”

“By mixing and interconnecting multiple bells and placing them in overlapping compositions a complex spectacle of light emerges,” she added.

The lamps will go into production with new Dutch design label Buhtiq 31 in four different colours and four sizes, and each one comes with a dimmer switch.

The prototypes are on show for the first time as part of Eat Drink Design during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, which continues until Sunday.

Eat Drink Design is a combined dining experience and design showcase, this time housed in a former theatre building called Kazerne. Studio Drift have been regular contributors to the show over the years, with past presentations including an LED and glass chandelier resembling a swarm of insects or shoal of fish.

Nauta and Gordij are best known for their lighting installations with LEDs covered in dandelion seeds and founded their studio after graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2005.

The post Nola colour-mixing lamps by Studio Drift
at Eat Drink Design appeared first on Dezeen.

The newest creation from Samuel Wilkinson is Blown, a lamp for the Copenhagen-based design company &tradition. Aiming to explore the reflective and refractive properties of glass, Wilkinson drew his…

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Based on the principles of a slingshot, the Escape Shot is a handy tool that helps you break the glass of the bus’s window, when trapped in an accident. The tool is simple to operate and doesn’t require much force to shatter the glass. Fashioned in such a way that both women and children can use it easily, this tool is a must-have for all buses.

Designer: Jihyun Seo

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(In Case Of Emergency… Smash The Glass was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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Mirrored walls and glass ceilings transform this office interior in Shanghai into a labyrinth of reflected light and imagery (+ slideshow).

Shanghai studio AIM Architecture designed the office for Soho China, the property developers behind Zaha Hadid’s Galaxy Soho and Wangjing Soho projects, and it occupies a space in the company’s Fuxing Plaza complex.

The space functions as a showroom, so the architects wanted to show customers the raw condition of the office units available to rent.

“As Soho rents out the offices in this building in bare shell state, the main design idea is to show the customers what they are actually getting, and at the same time add a layer of inspiring luxury to it,” they said.

Ventilation ducts and other service pipes are visible through a continuous glass ceiling, while glass floors surround individual meeting rooms.

Mirrored partitions alternate with glass screens and windows, juxtaposing views between rooms with framed apertures of the Shanghai skyline.

“The glass-only approach allows a complexity that emerges from a simple choice,” added the architects.

The entrance to the office is via an all-white corridor, where strips of light are reflected to create the illusion of a never-ending grid.

Other offices filled with mirrors and glass include a Tokyo office with a hidden slide and a production studio in New York with translucent screens and glass partitions. See more office interiors »

Photography is by Jerry Yin, Chief Architect, SOHO China.

Here’s a project description from AIM Architecture:

Glass office by AIM Architecture for SOHO China

An all glass and mirror inner cladding exposes the infrastructure of SOHO’s new office building in Shanghai. The glass creates manifold reflections of the sales models and meeting rooms, while leaving the original height and structure in view. This creates a ‘double reality’ that merges with the stunning views of downtown Shanghai.

Membrane ceilings create extra attention for the models. Light and surfaces reflect throughout the space, even further diffused by half see-through mirrors. Some of the floors are islands of stone or carpet, to create static moments to offset this sea of reflectivity.

As SOHO rents out the offices in this building in bare shell state, the main design idea is to show the customers what they are actually getting, and at the same time add a layer of inspiring luxury to it.

The glass-only approach allows creating a complexity that emerges from a simple choice. That is what makes this project bold and layered at the same time.

This project by AIM Architecture is part of Fuxing Plaza, a large mixed-use complex (140.000m2) that hopefully will boost more energy and surprises for the city.

Date of realisation: September 2013
Design team: Wendy Saunders, Vincent de Graaf, German Roig, Carter Chen and Jiao Yan.
Client: SOHO China

The post Glass office for Soho China
by AIM Architecture appeared first on Dezeen.